This invention relates to the field of facilitating commerce by providing access to information about goods and services that are displayed in television broadcasts.
Using television commercials to promote products is a widespread practice. Typically, viewers watch certain programs on television because they are interested in those programs. Television stations capitalize on this situation by broadcasting commercials interspersed with the program itself. These commercials typically try to convince the viewer to buy a particular product. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9cproductxe2x80x9d refers to both goods and services.
Interspersing commercials within television programs, however, has some significant drawbacks. For example, from the perspective of the viewer, television commercials are often perceived as annoying interruptions to the program that the viewer wishes to watch. Even when a viewer is interested in a particular product in a commercial, the viewer may prefer to find out about it after he has finished watching the program. This cannot be accomplished with conventional television broadcasts.
Another drawback, from the viewer""s perspective, is that the viewer has no control over the subject matter of the commercials that he will see, since the content of traditional commercials is determined solely by the advertisers. As a result, many viewers may not be interested in the commercials that they see.
In contrast, since the viewer selects the program that he is watching, the viewer is presumably interested in the contents of that program. During a conventional broadcast of the program itself, however, the viewer has no way to obtain information about any products that he sees in the program (e.g., a certain jacket being worn by an actor in a TV sitcom).
Traditional commercials also have drawbacks from the broadcaster""s perspective. First, because commercials only take up a relatively small fraction of the total time of a broadcast, the amount of air time that broadcasters can sell is limited. And if a broadcaster attempts to overcome this limitation by increasing the amount of commercials, the broadcaster risks losing its viewers, because they may switch to other stations, only to return once the commercial is over. Hence, no benefit is obtained for the advertiser, the broadcaster, and the consumer.
The Internet is another conventional forum in which products are advertised. These advertisements typically take the form of advertisements displayed on a website and generally appear on the screen simultaneously with the desired information, in a distinct section of the display. Unlike traditional television commercials, such advertisements do not preclude the user from viewing other information. If the user is interested in the Internet advertisement, the user can click on the advertisement and proceed accordingly. If on the other hand, the user is not interested, the user simply ignores the advertisement and continues obtaining the information in which he is interested. Internet advertisements are therefore less intrusive than television commercials. Internet advertisements also provide an added benefit, in that, once an interested customer has been found, a sale transaction can be facilitated on the spot.
Despite these advantages, however, product commercialization using the Internet can only take place when the relevant users are actually logged on to the Internet. Even among families with access to the Internet, however, the total amount of time spent logged on to the Internet in this country is dwarfed by the total amount of time spent watching television. As a result, the marketing power of Internet advertisements is still relatively insignificant in comparison to the marketing power of television commercials.
A commercialization system that does not suffer from the drawbacks described above would be desirable to both viewers and broadcasters. Until now, however, no such systems have been implemented.
In the past, attempts have been made to combine television and Internet commercialization. The simplest of these combinations is displaying a URL (uniform resource locator), or xe2x80x9caddress,xe2x80x9d of a website on the television during a traditional television commercial. This system is problematic for both the viewer and the advertiser, because the viewer may not have a pen handy to write the URL down. And even in cases where the user does write the URL down, the paper may not be handy the next time the user logs on to the Internet. Either of these scenarios would result in a lost opportunity to promote a sale, and a lost opportunity for a consumer to obtain a product in which he is interested.
Another existing combined television/Internet system is WebTV. WebTV allows its users to view a website on a traditional television display. Recent innovations have even allowed a website to be accessed without interrupting the television signal, using a picture in picture format. But in WebTV, the Internet and television-viewing sections are largely independent, and there is no interaction between the URL accessed and the television program being viewed. Finding information about products that appear within a show must be accomplished using traditional search methods.
Yet another combined television/Internet system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,181. The ""181 patent describes transmitting URLs during the vertical blanking interval of a television broadcasting signal. These URLs are extracted at the viewer""s home, and the associated web pages are fetched (via the Internet) while the viewer is still watching his television. In the ""181 patent, however, the viewer is merely fed two streams of information, with one displayed on the television, and the other displayed on a computer monitor. As a result, many of the disadvantages of traditional television viewing remain. In addition, the user must divert his attention away from the program that he is watching in order to obtain the information being displayed on the Internet.
The present invention advantageously overcomes many of the aforementioned disadvantages and provides an integrated television/Internet commercialization system. This system enables a user to watch television in a traditional manner, but also provides the user with an opportunity to indicate interest in things that are being displayed on the television. This indication could be made, for example, by pressing a button on a customized handheld remote control. In some preferred embodiments, the system stores these indications. After the user has finished watching the program (or at such other time, as the user may desire), these indications are transferred to a remote server, which presents to the user information about the products that were being displayed at the time the user made each indication. In other preferred embodiments, the system forwards the indications to a remote server that notes the time of arrival for each indication. The server then presents to the user information about the products that were being displayed at the time the user made each indication.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a method of commercializing products that are present in a television broadcast of a program is provided. The method includes the steps of inputting product information that identifies a plurality of products and associated times of presence in the program, inputting skew information that identifies a correspondence between an actual time of broadcast and a relative time within the program, and inputting a signal that was generated in response to an indication of interest made by a user. The method also includes the steps of determining a time-of-interest based on when the signal arrived, identifying a specific portion of the program that was being broadcast at the time of interest based on the time of interest and the inputted skew information, determining an assortment of products that were present in the television broadcast at the time of interest, and presenting the determined assortment of products to the user.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a method of commercializing products that are present in multiple simultaneous television broadcasts of programs is provided. The method includes the steps of inputting, for each of the programs, product information that identifies products which are present in the respective program and associated times of presence, inputting skew information that identifies a correspondence between an actual time of broadcast and a relative time within the respective program, inputting an event signal that was generated in response to an indication of interest made by a user, and inputting a channel-change signal that was generated in response to a channel change command made by the user. The method also includes the steps of determining a time-of-interest based on when the event signal arrived, determining a channel based on the channel-change signal, identifying a specific portion of the program that was being watched by the user based on the time-of-interest, the determined channel, and the inputted skew information, determining an assortment of products that were present in that program at the time-of-interest, and presenting the determined assortment of products to the user.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a method of commercializing products that are present in multiple simultaneous television broadcasts of programs is provided. The method includes the steps of inputting, for each of the programs, broadcast and product information that identifies products which are present in the broadcasts and times of presence for each of the products, inputting an event signal that was generated in response to an indication of interest made by a user, and inputting a channel-change signal that was generated in response to a channel change command made by the user. The method also includes the steps of determining an assortment of products that were present in the program that was being watched at the time the user made the indication of interest based on the event signal, the channel-change signal, and the inputted broadcast and product information, and presenting the determined assortment of products to the user.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, a remote control apparatus is provided. The remote control apparatus includes a plurality of switches, an infrared light transmitter, and a radio frequency transmitter. In response to an actuation of a given one of the plurality of switches, (a) the radio frequency transmitter transmits information identifying the given one of the plurality of switches and (b) the infrared light transmitter generates a sequence of infrared light pulses corresponding to the given one of the plurality of switches.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, a remote control apparatus is provided. The remote control apparatus includes a plurality of switches, an infrared light transmitter, and a radio frequency transceiver. In response to an actuation of a given one of the plurality of switches, the radio frequency transceiver transmits information identifying the given one of the plurality of switches. In response to a signal received by the radio frequency transceiver, the infrared light transmitter transmits a sequence of infrared light pulses corresponding to the received signal.
The above and other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed. description of preferred embodiments. The detailed description is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings, in which: